4 Finance Stocks Warren Buffett Has Owned for Over a Decade

When looking to build wealth in the stock market, one of the best things you can do is take a buy-and-hold approach. This contrasts with active investing, where investors look to time the market by buying low and selling high.

Buying and holding is a simple yet effective way to build wealth over time because you are buying great companies and letting your returns compound. Don’t just take my word for it. Warren Buffett is a perfect example of how buying and holding for the long run can build colossal wealth.

Since 1965, Berkshire Hathaway has generated a return of 3,600,000%, or 20% compounded annually. Buffett has held many stocks for 10 years or more, but the four I want to focus on here are Visa (V -0.06%), Mastercard (MA 0.07%), Globe Life (GL 0.82%), and Moody’s Corporation (MCO 0.23%).

Visa and Mastercard: 11 years

Warren Buffett loves payment processors, which we can see from his stakes in Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

Visa and Mastercard help customers move money seamlessly with their debit and credit card products. These companies make money by clearing transactions through their payment networks; in 2020, Visa and Mastercard were the two largest payments networks, clearing $13.6 trillion in payments volume. 

What makes these two companies appealing is their high-profit margins, which generate strong cash flows. Over the last decade, Visa and Mastercard have average profit margins of 44% and 40%,…